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Understanding Page Bands in Report Designer

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Written by Tim Sublette

The articles in this section of the Knowledge Base involve working with Page Bands for display in your reports. To access the Report Designer, select Toolbox Setup > Design Reports > Design (Report Type) Report. Select New Report to design a report from scratch or New Report from Existing. Select Designer to open Report Designer.

From this screen, add a Page Band component to your report, or edit an existing data band component.


Fig. 01 – Page Bands


Page bands are a vital component for report creation. Generally, they are used to output things like company address, contact information, copyright notices, page numbering, etc.. Report Designer has three types of page bands: Empty Data, Page Footer, and Page Header.

Page Header Band

A Page Header band is output at the top of every page of the report. There is no limit to the amount of Page Header bands that can be placed on a page.

The number of Page Header bands that can be placed on a page is effectively only limited by the available space.

Example

In a new report, add a Page Header band, a Data band, and a Header band. Use the Page Header band to display the current page number and number of pages in the report. Use the Data band to display data in the report. Use the Header band to display column headers. Add a text component to the Page Header band and add the following expression in the Text Property Editor:

{PageNofM}

To the Header Band, add four text components to act as column headers. For this example, I’ve added the following headers:

  1. Company

  2. Address

  3. Phone

  4. Contact

To the Data Band, add four text components and apply a data field that corresponds to the headers you chose above.

You should have something that looks like this:


Fig. 02 – Example with Three Bands and Page Number Expression in Designer


At this point, run the report. Notice the page number is printed at the top of each page and that data fields have populated down the pages.


Fig. 03 – Printed Report Example

Page Footer Band

A Page Footer band is output at the bottom of every page of the report. The Page Footer is useful for company information, dates, and page numbers. There is no limit to the amount of Page Footer bands that can be placed on a page.

The number of Page Footer bands that can be placed on a page is effectively only limited by the available space.

Example

In a new report, add a Page Footer band, a Data band, and a Header band. Use the Page Footer band to display the current page number and number of pages in the report. Use the Data band to display data in the report. Use the Header band to display column headers. Add a text component to the Page Footer band and add the following expression in the Text Property Editor:

{PageNofM}

To the Header Band, add four text components to act as column headers. For this example, I’ve added the following headers:

  1. Company

  2. Address

  3. Phone

  4. Contact

To the Data Band, add four text components and apply a data field that corresponds to the headers you chose above.

You should have something that looks like this:


Fig. 04 - Example with Three Bands and Page Number Expression in Designer


At this point, run the report. Notice the page number is printed at the bottom of each page and that data fields have populated down the pages.


Fig. 05 – Printed Report Example

PrintOnEvenOddPages Property


Fig. 06 – Print on Even Odd Pages Property


The PrintOnEvenOddPages property is used to print headers and footers on even/odd pages, for Page Header bands and Page Footer bands.


Fig. 07 – PrintOnEvenOddPages Set to EvenPage


Figure 06 shows a report with the PrintOnEvenOddPages property of the Page Header band set to EvenPage.


Fig. 08 – PrintOnEvenOddPages Set to OddPage.


Figure 07 shows a report with the PrintOnEvenOddPages property of the Page Header band set to OddPage.

There are three values available for the PrintOnEvenOddPages Property:

  1. PrintOnOddPage – Bands are printed on odd pages.

  2. PrintOnEvenPages – Bands are printed on even pages.

  3. Ignore – Bands are printed on all pages.

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